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HOW IT FEELS 
TO BE FIFTY 



By 

ELLIS PARKER BUTLER 

Author of "Pigs is Pigs" "Goat- Feathers" "Philo Gubb 
Correspondence School Detective," etc. 



1 




BOSTON AND NEW YORK 

HOUGHTON MIFFLIN COMPANY 

The Riverside Press Cambridge 

I920 






COPYRIGHT, 1919, BY THE CROWELL PUBLISHING COMPANY 
COPYRIGHT, 1920, BY ELLIS PARKER BUTLER 

ALL RIGHTS RESERVED 



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APR 21 litfO 



©CI.A565709 



How it Feels to be Fifty 



HOW IT FEELS 
TO BE FIFTY 

TO tell you the honest truth, 
I am obliged to say that, if I 
had not been asked to write these 
few lines on " How it Feels to be 
Fifty," being fifty would n't have 
meant anything in my young life. 

Of course this will be a terrible 
disappointment to the thousands of 
people who, for twenty-five years, 
have been counting off the months 
and days and hours and minutes, 
saying : 

" In twenty-one years more he 
will be fifty; in ten months more 
he will be fifty; in eight minutes 
more he will be fifty ! And then he 

page 3 



How it Feels to be Fifty 

will tell us how it feels, and we can 
absorb the knowledge from his wise 
old lips and get ready to feel as we 
ought to feel when we, too, are 
fifty." 

It is a shame to disappoint such 
a large and intelligent audience, but 
I am compelled to state that I do 
not feel like a doddering old wreck 
teetering on the edge of the grave. 

I remember a lovely underwear 
advertisement that depicted a sort 
of " cradle to grave " scene, with a 
toddling youngster at one end of 
the bridge of life and an aged man 
at the other end, and men of vari- 
ous progressive underwear ages 
scattered between. They were all 
arrayed in nice comfy underwear, 
and the bridge over which they 

page ± 



How it Feels to be Fifty 

were ambling was highest in the 
middle. It suggested that a man 
climbs up the bridge of life half his 
years and then goes down grade 
until he does n't need any more un- 
derwear, because of circumstances 
over which he has no control. 

This bridge-of-life or hill-of-life 
idea, with its forty years up-hill 
and then forty years down-hill, is 
pure fake. If life were like that I 
would now be writing a sadly in- 
trospective farewell ode, telling 
how I had reached the apex of 
life's hill and now saw before me 
the long slope down into the val- 
ley, toward the river all must cross. 

I would ring in something about 
the setting sun and the cooing of the 
turtle doves in the neat little ceme- 
t*i* 5 



How it Feels to be Fifty 

tery at the foot of the hill, and then 
say I was shouldering my heavy 
pack with hope and resignation for 
the final weary down-hill hike. I 
would add something about being 
footsore, about spent talents and 
honorable gray hairs, and every- 
body would weep and begin to 
save up money for a floral funeral 
wreath for me. 

The fact is that, except for the 
almanac, I don't know whether I 
am fifty or twenty. Judged by the 
way I feel to-day, I shall keep right 
on going up-hill, until — it may 
be a thousand years from now — 
I come to a jumping-off place. 

At fifty I have no feeling of start- 
ing down-hill, or of having reached 
the top of any hill. If you want to 

page 6 



How it Feels to be Fifty 

call my life a hill, I '11 say I see the 
road rising just as steadily and reg- 
ularly and pleasantly ahead ef me 
now as when I was twenty. And 
the top of it is so far from where I 
am now, and so much higher, that 
I can't even see it. Life is just be- 
ginning to be interesting. 

At fifty I feel like a young team- 
ster who has just got his skittish 
colts broken in and is now ready to 
start out on the real job. Until now 
I have been a raw hand, stopping 
to adjust the harness, talking alx>ut 
what I meant to do, studying the 
guide books, getting the stiff wagon 
greased, laying in provisions, fuss- 
ing around one way and another 
trying to find out where I wanted 
to go, and why I wanted to go 

page 7 



How it Feels to be Fifty 

there, and how to get there when 
I started. 

At fifty a man should feel 
younger and stronger and more fit 
than he ever felt before. I do. Most 
men do, I believe. Younger fellows 
do not even play properly. They 
make a sort of work of it. It is not 
until a man is fifty that he knows 
that golf and fishing and poker and 
pinochle are play, and that work is 
play, and that life itself is kind of 
an interesting big game, too. 

I took out an old photograph of 
mine the other day — one I had 
taken away back in 1887, when I 
was eighteen — and I remembered 
how full of cares and worries I was 
at that time. I used to stay awake 
night after night and worry over 

page 8 



How it Feels to be Fifty 

getting married, for instance. I 
used to wonder how I could ever 
get up enough courage to go up 
to a girl and ask her to marry 
me. 

That awful necessity loomed up 
before me and filled me with woe 
and agony, gave me cold chills and 
hot flushes, and made me abso- 
lutely miserable for years. 

I remember that when I was 
about twenty I saw an item in 
a newspaper, away inside some- 
wheres and tucked in a corner. It 
said statistics showed that bash- 
ful men were usually the first to 
marry. That item was a wonderful 
source of relief to me. I cut it out 
and carried it in my pocket, and 
whenever I felt the cold chill of 

page 9 



How it Feels to be Fifty 

fear come over me and I began to 
sweat at the thought that some 
day I must ask a girl to marry me, 
I got out that clipping and read it, 
and tried to brace up and be brave. 
To-day I have a wife and four chil- 
dren and that worry is gone. 

My hair was another great 
worry in those days. My father is 
quite bald, and he had become bald 
when he was a very young man ; 
when he was twenty-one or twenty- 
two, I believe. 

I don't know why a young man 
should think a heavy head of hair is 
such an imperative necessity, when 
hats are so cheap, but I was haunted 
by a dire fear that I might grow bald 
while still young. I was in contin- 
ual distress lest the Butler baldness 

page 10 



How it Feels to be Fifty 

might be hereditary. I had just one 
great hope — that at least some of 
my hair might stay on my head un- 
til I was married, anyway. 

When I became engaged, this 
hair-fear took the place of the 
afraid-to-propose fear. It was with 
me night and day. It was a keen, 
personal agony. The thought that 
I might have to walk up the church 
aisle to the music of the wedding 
march, with my bald head shining 
like a white watermelon, almost 
made me collapse with shame. And 
the worst of it was that my hair did 
begin to come out by handfuls. I 
shed hair like a cat in the spring- 
time. Those were awful days! I 
saw myself doomed to a life of hair- 
less disgrace and degradation. 

page ii 



How it Feels to be Fifty 

At fifty I have more hair than 
a man of that age is expected to 
have ; and I don't care a continental 
whether it stays or goes. It has worn 
well. If it goes to-morrow I can say, 
"No matter; it was a good crop 
while it lasted, and it lasted well." 
If I become absolutely bald it will 
be a good publicity feature, like the 
late Bill Nye's baldness. I should 
worry ! 

At fifty the few pains and aches 
I have are, so to speak, standard- 
ized. They are old friends ; if they 
went away I should miss them. I 
should not be myself without them. 

There is one I am especially fond 
of, because I have had it so long. It 
resides in my tummy. I have had 
that pain so many years that I have, 

page 12 



How it Feels to be Fifty 

so to speak, built my character 
around it, as an oyster builds the 
beautiful, lustrous pearl around the 
intruding grain of sand. 

Forty years ago I used to howl 
when that pain came. I used to lie 
across a chair, or a log, or a hum- 
mock of ground, and howl when it 
made remarks. Twenty years ago, 
when that pain gripped me I used 
to imagine death was about to end 
my promising career. To-day I 
treat it like an old friend when it 
makes itself felt. It can't fool me. 
I know its tricks and its manners. I 
say "'Ullo! 'Ullo! 'Ere you are 
again, are you ? Welcome 'ome, old 
top ! Sorry I can't give you more 
attention, but I 've got such a lot to 
do;just'ang around until you get 

page 13 



How it Feels to be Fifty 

ready to go, old sport, and make 
yourself comfortable/ ' 

At fifty my general health is bet- 
ter than it ever was. I have shaken 
off a bilious headache that was the 
curse of my youthful days. Proper 
eyeglasses have corrected an astig- 
matism that gave me other head- 
aches twenty years ago. With the 
same glasses I can see as well now 
as I ever did. My appetite is as 
good as it ever was. I enjoy every- 
thing in life more than I ever did. 
I am more sure of myself. I know 
what I can do, and I am not afraid 
to do it. 

At fifty a young man should have 
just about completed his prepara- 
tions to begin to live his real life. 
There are some precocious young 

page 14 



How it Feels to be Fifty 

fellows who "get their growth " 
by the time they are forty-five, but 
I am not one of them. There are 
some few prodigies who do worth- 
while living before forty, but there 
are not many of them. 

At fifty a man begins to live the 
worth-while life of a man, as distin- 
guished from his life as a mere ani- 
mal. At fifty he should have his 
family pretty well built up and com- 
plete, his experimental crops sown, 
and be ready to do his work and to 
enjoy his life in a hearty, unafraid, 
efficient manner. 

Without checking up the items 
carefully, and without claiming that 
some things done by the youngsters 
are not worth keeping, I venture to 
say the world would be surprised 

page 15 



How it Feels to be Fifty 

to find how much of its best in lit- 
erature, art, the drama, mechanical 
inventions and so on would remain 
if everything done by men and 
women under fifty were elimi- 
nated. 

At fifty a man is just about ma- 
ture, in this climate. And he is not 
a tomato; he does not decay as soon 
as he is ripe. He stays ripe and sound 
for many years, and each of his 
years beyond fifty should be worth 
five or ten of his earlier unripe 
years. 

To the young fellow of twenty- 
five it may seem that the man of 
fifty is an aged and doddering wreck 
whomusthave the thought of death 
constantly in mind. Til venture to 
say, judging by myself, that — ex- 

page 1 6 



How it Feels to be Fifty 

cept when the life-insurance man 
comes around with his propaganda 
— the man of fifty never thinks of 
death at all. Why should he? 

Personally, I worried a great deal 
more about life insurance and what 
style of coffin I'd like when I was 
twenty-one than I do now. Now I 
carry all the life insurance I can af- 
ford, as a plain business proposition, 
and let it go at that. When I was 
twenty-one I worried about dying 
at some untimely age and leaving 
some one or other to starve to death, 
as per the prospectus. Well, I have 
become skeptical about people 
starving to death. IVe never yet 
seen any one do it. 

I mention this death business be- 
cause I am trying to imagine what 

page i j 



How it Feels to be Fifty 

a young fellow believes a man of 
fifty thinks of. I know some of them 
think we fifty-year-olders are de- 
crepit old ruins, dwelling in the past 
and looking fearfully forward to an 
early dissolution. 

Take my word for it, sonny, no 
man of fifty, unless he be suffering 
from some dire disease, thinks of 
death at all, as applicable to himself. 
As for myself, seeing how things 
are going nowadays, I don't give 
death a thought. For all I know, 
and all you know, before I am ten 
years older the Great Manager of 
Things may decide it is time to go 
back to the old regime, and make 
men live five hundred or six hun- 
dred or nine hundred and sixty- 
nine years, as they did in the days 

page 1 8 



How it Feels to be Fifty 

of Methuselah and Noah. So why 
should I worry? 

At eighty or ninety, I imagine, 
some men do get a little weary of 
life and begin to be indifferent to 
its continuance; but at fifty many 
things are just beginning to be in- 
teresting. Until lately I have been 
so busy raising a family, and get- 
ting a home, and one thing and an- 
other, that I have not had time to 
give proper attention to my golf. I 
am'planning to put in thirty or forty 
good years improving my game. I 
have discovered that you cannot 
avoid faults in your golf unless you 
know what they are, and you can- 
not thoroughly know a golf fault 
until you acquire it. I think I have 
now acquired all the golf faults 

page 19 



How it Feels to be Fifty 

there are, and from now on I mean 
to have a lot of fun getting rid of 
them. 

Another thing I need a lot of time 
for now is my postage stamp col- 
lection. For forty years or so I have 
sort of fooled along with it, getting 
acquainted with the general meth- 
ods and outlines of the sport, and 
deciding just what to specialize in. 

I have now a pretty fair working 
knowledge, and know what I want 
to do in that line. I need a lot of time 
for that; I don't expect to do any 
very great things at it until I really 
get some leisure — say when I am 
eighty or ninety years old — but in 
the meanwhile I want to pick up a 
few rarities now and then. To do 
that Til have to make a little more 

page 20 



How it Feels to be Fifty 

money than I have been making, 
because I have reached a point 
where the stamps I need run into 
money rapidly. 

And I expect, in the next twenty 
or thirty years, to spend quite a lit- 
tle on my fishing. After forty years 
of it I am just beginning to learn 
how to fish properly. And I want 
to grow some real flowers. I want 
to have a tulip bed that will draw 
people from a hundred miles and 
make them beg for bulbs. But I 
have n't been able to get at the tu- 
lip affair this year because I have 
been out touring the country as 
a platform humorist. There are a 
half-dozen other things I am plan- 
ning to do; but all these are sub- 
sidiary to my writing, of course. 

page 21 



How it Feels to be Fifty 

At fifty I feel that I am about 
ready to begin my life work as a 
writer. For the past few years, 
thirty or forty of them, I have been 
experimenting around and trying 
to get my bearings and learn what 
life really is. I have done some 
pretty raw, inexperienced stuff, but 
it has been worth while because a 
young fellow has to go through the 
experimental stage. It takes time to 
decide what one really wants to do, 
and how he wants to do it. But when 
a man is fifty, with a long life ahead 
of him and a fair notion of what he 
wants to do, he begins to be hope- 
ful. 

At fifty, I feel that I am about 
ready to begin writing the eight or 
ten novels I have been wanting to 

page 22 



How it Feels to be Fifty 

write. Amelia E. Barr was about 
fifty years old when she began 
writing novels, and she wrote about 
seventy of them after that. Richard- 
son wrote " Pamela' ' — some call 
it the first modern novel — when 
he was fifty. Daniel De Foe turned 
to fiction only when he was fifty- 
five. 

There are hundreds of writers 
who did all their work, or most of 
their best work, after fifty. Oliver 
Wendell Holmes was forty-eight 
when he wrote the "Autocrat of 
the Breakfast Table/ ' his first great 
work. Longfellow wrote " Hiawa- 
tha' ' when he was forty-eight, and 
much of his best work followed. 
Whittier wrote "Snow-Bound" and 
"Maud Muller" at fifty-nine, and 

page 23 



How it Feels to be Fifty 

continued writing until he was sev- 
enty-nine. Tennyson was still writ- 
ing at eighty-three. "Trilby" was 
written when Du Maurier was 
sixty; "Les Miserables" when 
Victor Hugo was sixty; "Kenil- 
worth" when Scott was sixty, with 
sixteen novels following it. 

Reckoning a man's life by years 
is the biggest sort of flapdoodle. 
All of a man's worth-while living 
may come after he is fifty. Between 
fifty and fifty-one I may catch my 
biggest trout, and I expect to do it. 
After fifty I may write my best 
stories, and I mean to do it. 

In my back yard is a huge white- 
oak tree. Some tree experts say it 
is three hundred and fifty years old, 
some say six hundred, and one has 

page 24 



How it Feels to be Fifty 

estimated it at eight hundred. It 
does not make a bit of difference 
to the tree. It is as young and en- 
thusiastic when spring comes as it 
was when it was two years old. It 
puts forth leaves, grows new and 
tender twigs, bears sound acorns, 
shelters its colony of bird families, 
and holds one end of the clothes- 
line just as well as it ever did. 

It is a healthier, happier tree at 
six hundred years of age than thou- 
sands of pert young ten-year-olds, 
and is producing more and better 
oak leaves. If you went and asked 
it how it feels to be six hundred 
years old, it would say, " What do 
you mean, six hundred years old? 
What has that got to do with it?" 
A few hundred years one way or 

page 25 



How it Feels to be Fifty 

the other mean nothing to a sound, 
healthy white-oak tree. A few tens 
of years one way or the other mean 
nothing to a sound, healthy man. 

We know that Homer and Soc- 
rates were aged men because cer- 
tain famous portrait busts have ad- 
vertised it. But how many know 
whether Cicero, Plato, Marcus Au- 
relius, or Pythagoras did their best 
work before or after fifty? We 
don't know and we don't care. 

Take Noah, for example. At fif- 
ty Noah was a comparatively un- 
known citizen, with a neighborhood 
reputation for homely virtues, and 
a nice growing family; but he had 
cut no very great figure in the 
world. Some of the younger fel- 
lows thought of him now and then 

page 26 



How it Feels to be Fifty 

as a sort of aged gentleman who was 
about ready to drop into the grave. 
Probably they thought it was quite 
a feather in Noah's cap when one of 
them stopped him and asked him to 
write a short paper on the subject, 
" How it Feels to be Fifty." 

" There is a chance for you to 
produce a wonder," the young fel- 
low said to Noah. " Make the essay 
just as personal and real and funny 
as you possibly can. Age is one of 
the most interesting subjects in the 
world. Every body either looks for- 
ward to being fifty or back to hav- 
ing been fifty. There is no subject 
about which human beings think 
more/' 

"All right," Noah said. "Til do 
it; but you must expect to be dis- 

page 27 



How it Feels to be Fifty 

appointed, because I don't feel old, 
or aged, or anything of that sort. I 
feel young and lively, as if I were 
just beginning to live — " 

" Slush ! " said the young fellow. 
" You 're old. At fifty you have one 
foot in the grave. That stands to 
reason. Now be a nice old fellow 
and write something that will please 
the Neighborhood Society. Some- 
thing about standing on the apex 
of the hill of life, looking down the 
farther side, and that sort of thing." 

So Noah did. He aimed to please. 
He wrote the essay and said he was 
now fifty and had but a few years 
to live, and that he did hate to think 
of so soon having to part from one 
and all. The paper made a great 
hit. It was loudly applauded. 

page 28 



How it Feels to be Fifty 

And fifty years after that, Noah 
was still alive. 

And fifty years after that, Noah 
was still alive. 

And then another fifty years 
passed, and Noah was still alive. 

And then a hundredyears passed, 
and Noah was still alive. 

And two hundred years after 
that, Noah was still alive and going 
strong. 

And it was n't until one hundred 
years after that, that Noah made the 
big hit of his life by gathering his 
folks and his live stock into the 
ark. He was six hundred years two 
months and seventeen days old 
when the big rain began that was to 
make him famous. You can read 
that in Genesis, 7th chapter, 11th 

page 29 



How it Feels to be Fifty 

verse. That was just five hundred 
and fifty years two months and sev- 
enteen days after the young fellow 
asked Noah to write how it felt to be 
an old man of fifty starting on the 
downward path. 

I think we should all take Noah 
as a model, and keep a young heart 
and an eager, forward-looking spirit 
until we are at least six hundred 
years two months and seventeen 
days old. Our forty days of glory 
and greatness and good service may 
come long after we are fifty — five 
hundred and fifty years after, for 
all we know. 

I like Noah. He had no surren- 
der in him. Old at fifty ? He consid- 
ered himself a mere baby at fifty! 
At six hundred he was just getting 

page 30 



How it Feels to be Fifty 

into his proper stride. He was just 
ripe to tackle a big job like the 
flood. 

Chapter 9, verse 28 : And Noah lived 
after the flood three hundred and fifty 
years. 

Verse 29: And all the days of Noah 
were nine hundred and fifty years ; and 
he died. 

It was about time he died. Nine 
hundred and fifty years ought to 
satisfy any man. In my family, bar- 
ring accidents and diseases, we live 
to be ninety or ninety-six, and I ask 
you, frankly, how you can expect 
me to fret and worry and be agedly 
philosophical when I am still only 
a young tart of fifty. It is too much 
to ask of me. 

At fifty, I feel myself just reach- 
ing my full powers, mentally and 

page 31 



How it Feels to be Fifty 

physically; capable of more work 
and better work, more play and 
better play, and with so many years 
of work and play ahead of me that 
I never so much as think of my age 
or of being any age. I am keen and 
eager to get right at the next job 
I have on hand, and to make it a 
better piece of work than any I have 
ever done. 

The great expectations are not 
all on the younger side of fifty. But 
the great satisfactions are nearly 
all on the onward side of it. Life 
is not an up-one-side, down-the- 
other-side hill. It is a long, wind- 
ing road, good all the way, and the 
freshest, brightest flowers and the 
sweetest, solidest fruit usually grow 
beyond the fifty-year mile-post. 

page 32 



How it Feels to be Fifty 

At twenty my life was a feverish 
adventure, at thirty it was a prob- 
lem, at forty it was a labor, at fifty 
it is a joyful journey well begun. 



THE END 



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